Seyfarth Synopsis: A Missouri federal judge orders a theatre to provide, upon request, captioning services for the deaf for all theatrical performances.

A federal judge in Missouri recently ordered a 4500-seat indoor theatre to provide open or closed captioning for all theatrical performances upon request with two weeks’ notice, in a lawsuit brought by deaf patrons and advocacy organizations.

The Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri initially offered no captioning services of any kind for its theatre productions. After the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit, the theater agreed to provide captioning on a handheld device for one prescheduled Broadway-style performance per production (usually on a Saturday matinee), if it receives a request for captioning two weeks before the show. The theatre provided stands for the devices only at designated accessible seats because the fire marshal considered them to be a fire hazard. The plaintiffs maintained that captioning should be available for all shows, and that the theatre should provide stands for the handheld devices at all seats, not just accessible seats. They also sought an injunction requiring the theatre to (a) publicize the availability of captioning; (b) provide a means to request captioning; and (c) provide a method for people to purchase tickets by non-telephonic means, including e-mail.

The judge agreed with the plaintiffs on every issue but one. The judge held that providing captioning for only one show per Broadway-style production denied plaintiffs the equal opportunity to participate in the theatre’s performances because it limited their ability to choose from a number of different performances that were available to non-disabled patrons. The court also found that the theatre had failed to meet its obligation to provide auxiliary aids and services to ensure effective communication with the plaintiff. The theatre did not attempt to argue that providing captioning for all performances upon request would be an undue burden or fundamental alteration of its performances. Accordingly, the court ordered the theatre to provide captioning for all theatrical performances upon request with two weeks’ notice. The court also – with no discussion – ordered the theatre to publicize the availability of captioning, provide a means to request captioning, and provide a method of buying tickets through non-telephonic means, including e-mail. The court did not require the theatre to provide stands for the captioning devices at non-accessible seats, due to fire safety concerns.

The decision serves as a reminder that Title III of the ADA requires public accommodations to provide auxiliary aids and services to individuals with disabilities to ensure effective communication with them, unless doing so imposes an undue burden or fundamentally alters the nature of the goods and services provided. Organizers of events that are open to the public should keep this in mind and have a plan for ensuring effective communication for participants and spectators with different types of disabilities, as there have been a number of lawsuits filed in the past several years over the lack of captioning for live events.

Seyfarth Synopsis: Plaintiffs who pursued numerous web accessibility actions under Title III of the ADA are now using website accessibility to test the limits of a different area of law – employment law – California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.

Over the past few years, we have frequently written about the proliferation of demand letters and lawsuits alleging that a business denied a usually blind or vision-impaired individual access to its goods and services because the business’ website was not accessible, in violation of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and state laws. One firm that pursued many web accessibility actions under Title III and California’s Unruh Act (including a success in the Bags N’ Baggage case decided in plaintiff’s favor by a California state court) is now going after employers. In recent demand letters and lawsuits, they are alleging that employment websites are not accessible to blind job seekers, in violation of California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), California’s corollary to Title I of the ADA.

While this blog, and Seyfarth’s Disability Access Team, are focused on disability access issues affecting places of public accommodation that provide goods and services to the general public (not employees, though many of our team members are employment specialists as well), this emerging litigation trend is worthy of our discussion here because it is an extension of the tsunami of website accessibility demand letters and lawsuits pursued under Title III, involving the same technological and other issues, as well as the same plaintiffs and plaintiffs’ attorneys. But there is one big difference – the legal standard that applies to employment disability discrimination claims is different from the standard applied to disability discrimination claims brought against public accommodations. Title III is unique from other anti-discrimination statutes in that it requires (with exceptions) businesses take affirmative, proactive measures to ensure individuals with disabilities are afforded equal access to their goods and services. FEHA prohibits discrimination against individuals in employment. It requires employers, upon notice that an employee or applicant for employment requires a reasonable accommodation to perform the essential functions of his or her job, or to apply for employment, to engage in the interactive process to devise such a reasonable accommodation. The employer does not need to provide the employee or applicant’s requested accommodation as long as the accommodation provided is effective.

In the cases filed thus far, such as those by Dominic Martin, Roy Rios, and Abelardo Martinez in Orange County and San Diego Superior Courts in California last week, the plaintiffs argue that they are blind residents of California who want to enter the workforce, attempted to apply using the defendant’s online application, but could not because it was inaccessible to individuals with disabilities. They claim the WAVE tool confirmed the website’s inaccessibility (an automated tool like WAVE, while useful, cannot be relied upon to determine whether a website is accessible or not, let alone useable by an individual with a disability). In these lawsuits, the plaintiffs claim that they twice asked the defendant to remove the barriers and were ignored. Plaintiffs also claim that removing the barriers would take only a few hours (which anyone who has worked in the website accessibility space knows is rarely if ever possible). Plaintiffs allege these requests that defendant remove the barriers were requests for reasonable accommodation, though they were sent by the plaintiff’s attorney and not the actual individual seeking employment; thus possibly perceived as litigation demand letters rather than legitimate requests for reasonable accommodation. The plaintiffs allege that the companies did not respond and that they have a policy to deny disabled individuals equal employment by refusing to remove the barriers on the website. Each plaintiff alleges only a single legal claim for violation of FEHA, even expressly noting he is not asserting claims for violation of any federal law or regulation.

Will these claims find any success in the courts under the applicable law? We will be watching. In the meantime, businesses that have been focusing efforts on consumer-facing websites to mitigate risk under Title III should be aware of this new trend (if you have not already received such a letter).

Seyfarth Synopsis: HR 620 requires potential plaintiffs to provide businesses with notice of architectural barriers and give them an opportunity to remove them before filing suit.

Today, the House of Representatives passed the ADA Education and Reform Act (HR 620) by a vote of 225 to 192, with 12 Democrats voting for the bill. As we recently reported , the number of ADA Title III lawsuits has risen dramatically in the past four years. HR 620 is primarily an attempt to stem the tide of lawsuits brought by serial plaintiffs who bring dozens, if not hundreds, of lawsuits against businesses based on relatively minor physical access barriers found in their facilities for quick settlements.

HR 620 requires a would-be plaintiff to send the business a pre-suit notice that specifies (1) the alleged barriers in the facility, with a citation of the section of the ADA that has been violated; (2) “the circumstances under which the individual was actually denied access to a public accommodation;” and (3) whether a “request for assistance in removing the barrier was made.” A lawsuit can only be filed after sending this notice if the business does not respond within 60 days with a description of the improvements that it will make to remove the barrier. If the business responds as required, but fails to remove the barrier or make “substantial progress” toward removing the barrier within 120 days, a lawsuit can be filed. HR 620 also requires the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to develop a program to educate state and local governments and property owners about the ADA’s requirements, and directs the Judicial Conference of the United States to develop a model program to promote the use of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms (including a stay of discovery during mediation – similar in concept to what some courts already require by local rule, such as in the Northern District of California) to facilitate early resolution rather than litigation of ADA claims based on alleged architectural barriers.

Supporters of the bill say that — because there are so many technical requirements that businesses can violate unknowingly (e.g., the toilet paper roll is half an inch too far away from the toilet, or the mirror is 1” too high) — providing businesses with notice and an opportunity to remove barriers is a good thing and does exactly what the law was designed to do — make businesses accessible. Opponents say that the amendment will cause businesses to sit back and take no action to comply with the law until they receive a notice. In addition, they claim that attorneys will be reluctant to take on these cases because there is no chance to receive a fee award by a court if a business does in fact remove the barriers identified in the notice.

Whether HR 620 (or some form of it) will ever become law remains to be seen, as the Senate has taken little action on this issue. That said, HR 620 is the most significant development thus far in the effort to deter serial ADA lawsuit filers and may provide some momentum for legislative reform.

Seyfarth Synopsis: The number of federal ADA Title III lawsuits continue to surge in 2017, fueled largely by website accessibility claims; while legislative reform efforts continue to mitigate the physical accessibility portion of those lawsuit numbers.

The results of our 2017 ADA Title III lawsuit count are in, putting a fifth consecutive year (since we began tracking in 2013) of growth in the number of ADA Title III lawsuits filed in federal court. In 2017, 7,663 ADA Title III lawsuits were filed in federal court — 1,062 more than in 2016. While a bit slower growth than in 2016 (which saw an 1,812, or 37% year over year increase) over 2015, this 16% increase is almost double the 2014-2015 8% increase, demonstrating a continued upward trend in the number of filings.

California and Florida continue to be hotbeds of litigation, with 2,751 and 1,488 lawsuits (up from 2,468 in CA in 2016 and down from 1,663 in FL) respectively. New York is the big story, having almost doubled its 543 lawsuits filed in 2016 to 1023 in 2017. Utah moved up in the ranks, with a more than doubling of federal lawsuit filings, from 124 to 360. Nevada, not in the top 10 states for filings in 2016, is relatively close behind with 276 lawsuits, while the 2016 holder of the fifth spot, Texas, dropped to number nine, cutting its 267 2016 number down by more than half, to 129. Arizona, with 335 lawsuit filings in 2016, dropped out of the top 10 in 2017. Colorado’s numbers also more than doubled, from 92 in 2016 to 215 in 2017; and New Jersey newly entered the top 10 this year with 108 lawsuits. Georgia, held its sixth spot on the chart, also holding fairly steady at 187 lawsuits, a slight decrease from the 193 filed in 2016. Finally, Pennsylvania showed relatively modest growth, increasing by 80 lawsuits over its 102 2016 count. Here are the numbers for the top ten states:

Similar to last year, while physical accessibility lawsuits remain common, these numbers continue to be driven largely by the vast numbers of website accessibility lawsuit filings, many by new attorneys in familiar (CA, FL, NY) jurisdictions. The extreme increase in New York is likely due at least in part to 2017 federal court decisions that have likely embolded plaintiffs’ attorneys in that jurisdiction. Note that these numbers of course do not include the many demand letters plaintiffs sent to businesses asserting website accessibility claims, do not include lawsuits filed only in state courts, and are conservative estimates, as our research methods are sound in finding at least the numbers we report here, and it is entirely likely we have not captured every ADA Title III filed in federal court.

Meanwhile, Congress has continued legislative efforts to provide business some relief from “drive-by” physical accessibility lawsuits. The ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017, introduced January 24, 2017 as H.R. 620 by Texas Representative Ted Poe, would, among other things, codify a “notice and cure period” that would prohibit a plaintiff from filing a lawsuit based on failure to remove an architectural barrier unless the plaintiff has first given the businesses notice of the alleged violations and an opportunity to provide a plan to address them. On October 30, 2017, the House Committee on the Judiciary reported the bill, and it is scheduled for referral to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution and Civil Justice on February 8, 2017. Some states also continued their own legislative reform efforts, such as Florida HB 727, effective July 1, 2017; and in Nevada the State Attorney General intervened in a federal ADA Title III lawsuit by a serial plaintiff who had filed at least 275 lawsuits seven months.

We will, as always, continue to keep tracking lawsuit filings, legislative efforts, and other breaking developments and keep you up to date — as the Title III trend shows no signs of cooling down in 2018.

Seyfarth Shaw Synopsis: Effective December 18, 2017, New York became the latest state to enact a law cracking down on fake service animals.

New York recently joined an increasing number of states that have passed laws aimed at curbing abuse of laws and regulations designed to ensure that individuals with disabilities can be accompanied by their service animals in places of public accommodation and other settings. On December 18, 2017, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a bill that, among other things, makes it unlawful to knowingly apply a false or improper identification tag designating a service, emotional support, or therapy dog. In signing the bill, Gov. Cuomo noted an increasingly important role therapy dogs play in supporting individuals with diseases such as anxiety and PTSD, and also their role in assisting the ill and elderly. Authority to enforce the new law is vested with each municipality’s dog control officer. Violators will face a fine of up to $100, up to 15 days of jail time, or both.

Service animal registrations, vests, and any other means which identify service animals do not have any legal significance, according to the DOJ, and may be easily obtained online. And, as we have previously reported, businesses may only ask a handful of permitted questions to assess whether they must admit a purported service animal. Businesses should be aware of and train their employees to comply with the ADA’s, and any applicable state and local laws’, service animal requirements. Although it may be tempting to undertake more aggressive measures to ferret out cases of service animal fraud, new laws in places like New York do not relieve businesses of their federal obligations to adhere to a protocol for addressing service animal issues. Under DOJ guidance, businesses cannot, for example, ask about the nature of a person’s disability who is accompanied by a purported service animal, or ask for a demonstration of what tasks the animal performs. Therefore, businesses should nonetheless remain vigilant in complying with their obligations to ensure access for those individuals with a genuine need for these animals.

Other states such as Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia have similar laws or regulations prohibiting the misrepresentation of service animals. This trend has recently made national news. These state laws will hopefully discourage those who seek to take advantage of disability laws for an improper purpose, and empower authorities in dealing appropriately with cases of abuse.

Seyfarth Synopsis: 2017 saw an unprecedented number of website accessibility lawsuits filed in federal and state courts, and few courts willing to grant early motions to dismiss.

Plaintiffs were very busy in 2017 filing ADA Title III lawsuits alleging that public accommodations’ websites are not accessible to individuals with disabilities. Here is our brief recap of the 2017 website accessibility lawsuit numbers, major developments, and our thoughts for 2018.

In 2017, plaintiffs filed at least 814 federal lawsuits about allegedly inaccessible websites, including a number of putative class actions. We arrived at this number by searching for lawsuits with certain key terms and then manually reviewing the results to remove any cases that did not concern an allegedly inaccessible website. Our numbers are conservative, as it is very likely that not every website accessibility lawsuit’s description – upon which we based our search – contained our search terms. This caveat applies to all of the data set forth below.

Of the 814 federal cases, New York and Florida led the way with more than 335 and 325 cases, respectively. Surprisingly, California only had nine new website accessibility lawsuits in 2017, most likely because plaintiffs filed in state court. Federal courts in Arizona (6), Georgia (9), Illinois (10), Massachusetts (15), New Hampshire (2), Michigan (1), New Jersey (4), Ohio (8), Pennsylvania (58), Puerto Rico (1), Texas (7), and Virginia (24) also had their share of website accessibility lawsuits.

In California state courts, plaintiffs filed at least 115 website accessibility lawsuits in 2017 under the state’s non-discrimination laws. We compiled this data based on searches we performed for lawsuits by four blind plaintiffs represented by two California law firms.

In New York state courts, plaintiffs filed at least six website accessibility lawsuits in 2017. All were putative class actions.

Defendants in at least 13 federal website accessibility cases filed motions to dismiss or for summary judgment where there were no unusual circumstances like a prior court order or settlement agreement that obligated the defendant to make its website accessible. The courts denied all but two of those motions and let the cases proceed to discovery.

In one case where the defendant, Bang & Olfusen, won its motion to dismiss, the court noted that the plaintiff had failed to plead a nexus between the physical place of public accommodation and the website in question. In the other case, the court dismissed the claims made against Domino’s because requiring the defendant to comply with a set of web accessibility guidelines that are not yet law would violate due process principles. The Domino’s decision is on appeal and will be reviewed by the Ninth Circuit in 2018. Our post about these cases is here.

In the 11 cases where the federal judges refused to dismiss website accessibility claims and allowed the cases proceed to discovery, the defendants had unsuccessfully argued that the principles or due process and the doctrine of primary jurisdiction should be the basis for dismissal. One of our posts discussing some of these decisions is here.

In three decisions, the courts were open to the concept that providing telephonic access to the goods and services offered at the public accommodation may satisfy the ADA, but they refused to dismiss the cases at the outset on this basis.

The first trial in a website accessibility lawsuit took place in 2017. Florida U.S. District Judge Scola presided over this bench trial and concluded that grocer Winn Dixie had violated Title III of the ADA by having an inaccessible website. Judge Scola also found that the $250,000 cost to remediate Winn Dixie’s website was not an “undue burden” and ordered Winn Dixie to make its website conform with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 AA (WCAG 2.0 AA).

Three defendants were able to dismiss website access lawsuits early because they had already entered into consent decree or settlement agreements with previous plaintiffs which required them to make their websites conform to the WCAG 2.0 within a specified amount of time. That said, not all courts agree that a prior settlement — as opposed to a binding judgment or court order — can be the basis for a dismissal.

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) rulemaking to create new website accessibility regulations is now officially dead, as we recently blogged. The lack of clear rules will lead to more litigation and inconsistent judicially-made law. In fact, it appears that the DOJ will not be issuing any new regulations under Title III of the ADA about any subject, according to the agency’s December 26 announcement in the Federal Register repealing all pending ADA Title III rulemakings.

What’s in store for 2018? If the Ninth Circuit upholds the Domino’s district court’s dismissal on due process grounds, the number of California website accessibility lawsuits in federal court may go down dramatically. Even if that occurs, we see no end to the website accessibility lawsuit surge elsewhere and expect that new plaintiffs’ firms will continue to enter the scene. While the current administration’s DOJ is not likely to push the website accessibility agenda, its inaction will not stop the lawsuits. Only an amendment to the ADA can do that, which we believe is highly unlikely. Thus, the best risk mitigation effort for covered entities is still to make their websites accessible as soon as possible, with the assistance of ADA Title III legal counsel experienced in website accessibility issues and reputable digital accessibility consultants.

Seyfarth Synopsis: The Justice Department withdraws pending rulemakings for accessible websites, furniture and non-fixed equipment. The current Department of Justice’s (DOJ) regulatory approach to Title III of the ADA is yet another example of what a difference an election can make.

On the web access rules, the DOJ stated that it is “evaluating whether promulgating regulations about the accessibility of Web information and services is necessary and appropriate. Such an evaluation will be informed by additional review of data and further analysis. The Department will continue to assess whether specific technical standards are necessary and appropriate to assist covered entities with complying with the ADA.” This is an unfortunate development for the disability community and covered businesses alike. Instead of having clear rules to follow, businesses will have to look to the constantly evolving patchwork of decisions coming out of the courts for guidance. Meanwhile, the number of website accessibility lawsuits continues to surge as businesses scramble to make their websites accessible.

With regard to the withdrawal of the rulemaking about non-fixed equipment and furniture, DOJ said that it is “reevaluating whether regulation of the accessibility of non-fixed equipment and furniture is necessary and appropriate.” We see far less litigation on this topic although advocacy groups may feel the need to press the litigation agenda more aggressively now that no rules are forthcoming. Businesses are, for the most part, better off without these rules but they need to remember that the absence of technical standards does not necessarily mean there are no obligations under the ADA with regard to these items. Title III of the ADA contains a general non-discrimination mandate and more general rules that still require a public accommodation to ensure access to all its goods, services and benefits, subject to certain defenses.

This latest development just confirms what we predicted would happen during this administration, albeit with more finality than we had anticipated.

Seyfarth Synopsis: California will soon have a new law requiring WCAG 2.0 AA compliance for state agencies’ websites by 2019.

On October 14, 2017 California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 434, which will create a new Government Code section 11546.7 and require, beginning July 1, 2019, state agencies and state entities to post on their website home pages a certification that the website complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA, or a subsequent version, and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

State agencies have been required, since January 1, 2017 by virtue of 2016 legislation, to comply with Section 508 in developing, procuring, maintaining, or using electronic or information technology “to improve accessibility of existing technology, and therefore increase the successful employment of individuals with disabilities, particularly blind and visually impaired and deaf and hard-of-hearing persons.” That statute, Government Code 7405, also requires entities that contract with state or local entities for the provision of electronic or information technology or related services to respond to and resolve any complaints regarding accessibility that are brought to the entity’s attention.

The new Government Code section 11546.7 will also require the State’s Director of Technology to create a standard form for each state agency or entity’s chief information officer to use in determining whether its respective website complies with the accessibility standards.

With this legislation, California joins state and municipal entities in other parts of the country that have similar web accessibility requirements for governmental entities and contractors. This legislation fills a small part of a void the federal Department of Justice has decided for the time being not to fill, when it put its pending regulations that would set an accessibility standard for state and local (as well as private entity) websites on the inactive list.

Under HB 727, a business that hires a “qualified expert” to inspect its premises to either verify conformity with ADA facilities access requirements, or to develop a compliance plan, can have that information considered in a lawsuit filed in a court within the state of Florida, provided that the certificate of conformity or remediation plan has been filed with the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (the “DBPR”). The court “must consider” any such remediation plan or certificate of conformity “and determine[s] if the plaintiff’s complaint was filed in good faith and if the plaintiff is entitled to attorney fees and costs.”

Here’s how it would work: An owner of a place of public accommodation pays a “qualified expert” to inspect its premises. If the expert concludes that the facility complies with the ADA, the business can submit a “certificate of conformity” to the DBPR stating that the premises conforms to Title III. Certificates of conformity are valid for three years and must include: the date that the premises was inspected, the name of the “qualified expert,” proof of the expert’s qualifications, and a statement from the qualified expert attesting that the information contained in the certificate is complete and accurate.

Businesses whose facilities do not fully comply with the ADA can submit a remediation plan to the DBPR indicating that the facility intends to conform with ADA requirements within a reasonable amount of time that does not exceed 10 years. In addition to the requirements applicable to the certificate of conformity, the remediation plan must include the specific remedial measures that the place of public accommodation will undertake, and the anticipated date of completion.

To be a “qualified expert,” one must be a building code inspector, architect, engineer, contractor, or “person who has prepared a remediation plan related to a claim under Title III … that has been accepted by a federal court in a settlement agreement or court proceeding, or who has been qualified as an expert in Title III … by a federal court.” This means that an experienced defense attorney who has prepared a remediation plan for a court approved settlement could be considered a “qualified expert.”

HB 727 is not likely to have much impact on the number of ADA Title III lawsuits filed in Florida for several reasons. First, the law will likely only apply to ADA lawsuits filed in state court, and most ADA Title III lawsuits are filed in federal court. This is because under the Supremacy Clause of the United States constitution, Florida state’s requirement that a court must consider remediation plans and certifications of conformity are likely preempted by the ADA and will not be applied to a plaintiff’s federal lawsuit. Second, given that HB 727 does not explicitly render an access lawsuit moot just because there is a remediation plan or certificate of conformity on file, businesses will be reluctant to publicize access barriers in their facilities in a publicly-filed document, which plaintiffs can still use to sue them. Third, having a court consider the existence of a remediation plan or certificate of conformity in deciding whether to award a plaintiff attorneys’ fees is not likely to deter plaintiffs who know that defendant businesses will need to spend a lot of money litigating before a court ever considers either of these documents. Fourth, HB 727 does nothing to address the explosion of website access litigation under the ADA in Florida which has been a key driver in the increased number of lawsuits in the past 12 months. Indeed, as we have previously reported (here and here), California has similar legislation to HB 727, yet California still had approximately 2,468 ADA Title III filings in federal court in 2016 and continues, along with Florida, to be a hotbed for ADA Title III litigation.

Seyfarth Synopsis: In denying Dave & Buster’s motion to dismiss and for summary judgment, a federal judge said that telephonic access might be an alternative to having an accessible website, but cannot decide until the record is much more developed.

No court has yet decided whether a public accommodation can comply with Title III of the ADA’s equal access mandate by providing telephonic access to the information and services on a website blind people cannot use with a screenreader. However, last week federal Judge Philip Gutierrez of the Central District of California recognized it as a possibility, while allowing a website accessibility lawsuit against Dave & Buster’s to move forward to discovery.

In Gorecki v. Dave & Buster’s, Dave & Buster’s filed a motion to dismiss and for summary judgment at the outset of the case, arguing that it had complied with the law by providing telephonic access to the information and services on its website. Specifically, it had placed an “accessibility banner” on its website stating: “If You Are Using A Screen Reader And Are Having Problems Using This Website, please call 1 (888) 300-1515 For Assistance.” Dave & Buster’s had staffed the line with a “receptionist.” In response, the court acknowledged that the Department of Justice had stated in 2010 that telephonic access could be a means of complying with law in lieu of having an accessible website. However, the court found that the plaintiff had raised a genuine dispute as to whether having the phone line and receptionist satisfies the ADA because—among other things—Dave & Buster’s failed to submit evidence that the accessibility banner itself was accessible (i.e., could be read) to screen reader users. The court concluded that “the record as it stands is insufficient to address compliance, so the court disagrees with D&B that the mere appearance of the phone number on the Website renders Gorecki’s claim moot.”

Our takeaway from this holding is that a defendant seeking to show that it is providing access to the information and services on its website through a telephone line must submit more robust evidence about how that telephonic provides equal access.

The court also rejected Dave & Buster’s three other arguments for dismissal. First, the court said that holding Dave & Buster’s liable for a Title III violation in the absence of regulations about websites would not violate due process because the DOJ made clear “as early as 1996” that websites are covered under the law, and plaintiff was not advocating for adherence to any particular set of accessibility standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. Second, the court said dismissal was not appropriate under the doctrine of primary jurisdiction because “a finding of liability regarding the Website’s compliance with the ADA does not require sophisticated technical expertise beyond the ability of the Court.” These two holdings echo the same or similar holdings by virtually every other court that has considered these issues. Finally, the court stated that plaintiff did not necessarily have to request an accommodation from Dave & Buster’s before filing suit.

Judge Gutierrez’s decision is the third in which the Manning law firm in Newport Beach, CA has successfully rebuffed motions to dismiss website claims by defendants in federal court. The firm has appealed to the Ninth Circuit the one unfavorable decision it received in Robles v. Dominos Pizza. The opening brief will is due to be filed this week.

ABOUT SEYFARTH’S ADA TITLE III TEAM

Seyfarth’s ADA Title III team consists of attorneys with extensive experience in ADA Title III litigation located in many offices across the United States, including California where plaintiffs are most active. With additional litigators admitted to practice in virtually every jurisdiction in the country, we have the resources to defend our clients against lawsuits and investigations on a nationwide basis and provide consistent and efficient service in national engagements. We have successfully defended against or resolved hundreds of lawsuits brought under Title III of the ADA and applicable state laws.